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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Charitable Hospitals To Be Fined For Treating Uninsured Under Obamacare

60 percent of American hospitals are apparently nonprofit, many of those charitable- which means if you are poor and uninsured they won't kick you out the door if you are sick and in need. Under Obamacare that might change. Since they are nonprofit, they could be subject to hefty fines, and special scrutiny if they continue to treat those without insurance, so they might be forced to switch to for-profit status.

Why would the feds do this? No incentive for those patients who get treated for free to buy health insurance.

A new provision in Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, which takes effect under Obamacare, sets new standards of review and installs new financial penalties for tax-exempt charitable hospitals, which devote a minimum amount of their expenses to treat uninsured poor people

[Snip]

“It requires tax-exempt hospitals to do a community needs survey and file additional paperwork with the IRS every three years. This is to prove that the charitable hospital is still needed in their geographical area — ‘needed’ as defined by Obamacare and overseen by IRS bureaucrats,” said John Kartch, spokesman for Americans for Tax Reform.

“Failure to comply, or to prove this continuing need, could result in the loss of the hospital’s tax-exempt status. The hospital would then become a for-profit venture, paying income tax — hence the positive revenue score” for the federal government, Kartch said. “Obamacare advocates turned over every rock to find as much tax money as possible.”

With more Americans insured, charitable hospitals might not meet the requirements for non-profit status. Of course, for-profit hospitals will create more tax revenue for the feds, so we know why they're pushing this forward.

Those 'poor' people will no longer have a free resource for emergency health care, they will be forced to buy health insurance (which will be costly, or at least much more than 'free') or face a huge fine. Well, they got what they voted for.